Joint suppression of cardiac bSSFP cine banding and flow artifacts based on twofold phase-cycling and a dual-encoder neural network

Motivation: Cardiac bSSFP cine imaging suffers from banding and flow artifacts caused by the off-resonance. Although fourfold phase cycling suppresses the banding artifacts, it invokes flow artifacts and prolongs the scan. Goal(s): To develop a twofold phase-cycling sequence with a neural-network-based reconstruction for a fast and joint suppression of banding and flow artifacts in cardiac cine imaging. Approach: We compared the method with standard bSSFP and regular phase cycling in the left ventricle and atrium in 10 healthy subjects. Results: Needing only 10 heartbeats, the proposed method robustly suppressed both artifacts in the presence of anatomical variations. Impact: Banding and flow artifacts are common in bSSFP cine imaging, especially with cardiac devices or high-field MR. The proposed method provides a robust and practical tool for suppression of them and improves the reliability of cine MRI.